4th Annual Korenman Lecture, Dr. Farhana Sultana, 2011

“Negotiating Contaminated Identities: Gender, Water, and Development in Altered Waterscapes”

Farhana Sultana, Professor of Geography, Syracuse University; Chair and Organizer of the ‘The Right to Water’ conference

Wednesday, March 16th at 4pm, Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

The United Nations’ articulation in 2002 of a universal human right to water also provided the thematic springboard for The Right to Water conference, organized by Farhana Sultana. The goal of the two-day gathering, says Sultana, was to “look at the right to water and how it plays out on the ground — in terms of issues of legalities, governance, or even philosophical approaches to how water should be managed. If the right to water is an established human right, how do we materialize that? We live in a world where more than a billion people do not have access to safe water. What does that mean for our humanity and our sense of global citizenship or us as a human community, if we cannot ensure basic rights to water and sanitation and have young children dying, whether from water-borne diseases or from lack of quality water or reliable water sources?